Beacon Action Demo

Here’s a quick demo of Beacon Action, our proximity-based home automation app. We set up beacons around the office and get accurate responses when walking in and out of range of each beacon. When the app goes live, you’ll have the ability to integrate with smart home products like lighting, HVAC, IFTTT and more. How would you use it?

London’s Gatwick Airport now has 2,000 beacons for indoor navigation

Complex indoor environments just like air-ports and shopping centers can be quite a nightmare to find your way around. And even though Google is seeking smartphones with 3D detectors as one possible solution for places GPS won’t correctly reach, another approach is to kit out an interior with a number of Bluetooth beacons – giving mobile users located-locked pings to fix onto to find out exactly where they’re.

The UK’s second busiest air-port, Gatwick airport, has picked the latter approach to power an indoor navigation system it’s launching as an element of a larger, multi-year transformation program.

It’s finally completed providing its two terminals with around 2 Thousand battery-powered beacons to make certain that digital map users will get a more exact blue dot as they walk around. The beacon system will also be used to power an augmented reality wayfinding tool – to make certain mobile users can be guided to precise locations inside the terminals through on-screen arrows. The beacon system is slated as backing up positioning with +/-3m accuracy.

Gatwick is preparing to integrate indoor positioning into some of its applications, and says it’s in discussions with airlines to make use of it for their own applications and services – giving illustration of them having the ability to send push notifications to inform travellers if they’re running late, or even make a decision on whether or not to wait or offload luggage so a plane can take off promptly.

Shops and other third parties will also be able to use the system for proximity detection of potential purchasers and delivery advertising and marketing messages – as a minimum to those who have opted in to receive them.

Gatwick says it won’t be gathering any sensitive information via the beacons but says “generic information on ‘people densities’ in different beacon zones” will be used to help to improve airport operations – for instance, queue measurement, streamlining passenger flows and decreasing obstruction.

The airport has worked with UK new venture Pointr on the system. And also developing software and managing the system on an ongoing basis, Pointr is providing an SDK with support for 3D AR wayfinding to allow third parties to take advantage of the functionality.

Using https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/25/gatwick-airport-now-has-2000-beacons-for-indoor-navigation/